The Lisa was first introduced on January 19, 1983 and cost US$9,995 (approximately $23,700 in today’s dollars.) It was the very first personal computer system with a graphical user interface (GUI) to be sold commercially. It used a Motorola 68000 CPU clocked at 5 MHz and had 1 MB RAM.

I asked a few Chinese friends why they thought domestic phones don’t tend to sell well past RMB 3,000, and got several variations of the same basic answer: once you’re spending that much anyway, why not just spend a little more to get an iPhone? A China Business News article on the phenomenon makes the same basic point.

But after all the fireworks and fun, the one thing I never ever received from AAAG were coherent answers to my questions, particularly the most important one of all. And that is: Why has Amazon placed indies in a $7 dollar pricing box? Why does it grab 65% of your revenue (not counting its transmission fees, which it charges on every transfer and which vary based on book size) if you price under $2.99 and the same if you charge over $9.99? This is an issue of critical importance to indies because it is not financially feasible to hand over that level of margin to a reseller for a download service. (And if you think Amazon is paying you a “royalty” when you fork over that 65% operating expense, please stop reading now. You are incurably ignorant and I cannot help you.)

Generally I tend to stay the fuck away from publishing these days. Why continue to bang my head against a wall?

But sometimes a post rises to the level of requiring reading by others.

The above is such a post.

Amazon isn’t concerned about how many books it sells as being good for writers. It wants to sell as many books as possible because it’s good for Amazon.

If Amazon could sell fifty-seven billion books yet have each writer make only a dollar in a year, that’d suit Amazon just fine.

And while I focus on Amazon here — because the originating post is about it — this holds true for all companies that have managed to create a stranglehold in any area.

Jobs: I consider those a brochure for why you should buy an Apple II or Macintosh. I think people have already determined that the sub-$500 computers don’t do very much. They either tease people to want more or frustrate people completely.

Playboy: What about some of the smaller portables?

Jobs: They are OK if you’re a reporter and trying to take notes on the run. But for the average person, they’re really not that useful, and there’s not all that software for them, either. By the time you get your software done, a new one comes out with a slightly bigger display and your software is obsolete. So nobody is writing any software for them. Wait till we do it — the power of a Macintosh in something the size of a book!

There are two key issues to Xiaomi getting involved with CPUs. PadNews has an analysis, reprinted from “21st century business Herald” [Google Translate].

1) Patent protection. There are issues regarding licensing fees that have to be paid to major patent holders such as Qualcomm, Nokia (now Microsoft), and even Samsung.

2) Lowering phone prices. Here in the U.S., we find China tech to be bargain priced. In the majority of the world, it’s still priced too high in places such as India and other developing nations.

Bing Translator does the best job on this paragraph:

Just a year ago at the Beijing Forum on Microelectronics, Lei has publicly called for: chip industry should learn from the Internet free of charge, in accordance with the cost price, “Why sell thirty or forty dollars, instead of three or four dollars? If the chip free, millet high-end cell phones only 500 Yuan.” The Lei predicted that the next 3-5 years, was” certainly is based on sand, the chip company sold chips and achieved great success. ”

At that time, price 699, 799 USD red rice has just released, Lei presented at the event: “I did not expect red rice is so successful. Low end of the market there was so big, so strong market demand.” Red Rice’s success in bringing the Lei is determined in the low-end mass market a go.